My hubby was in the shower last Tuesday morning as I was preparing breakfast, and suddenly, I found myself sharing the shower with him. Not in the same room, mind. The plumber came round and £250 pounds later, we have a spanking new shower and a fistful of dire warnings about the state of our bath. Apparently it is disintegrating. As in, the fibreglass is shredded and who knows when I might be taking more showers with my man. So my gauge was a little tight last week, shall we say!

We’re saving for a new bathroom – hopefully it’ll get done within the next year – I want the blandest, cleanest looking bathroom available with a shiny white suite. Currently, it’s a sickly yellow-pink. Ugh. And we’re pretty sure it was put together on a DIY basis by the last guy who lived here – we have had so many problems with it. Complete bodge job. Nothing seems to have been put in right. The pipes on the loo have had to be changed, the overflow doesn’t work, the sink has a w bend instead of an s-bend, none of the tiles are parallel and the grouting is mostly on top instead of between. <Rant over> (sorry).

I dunno what you’re looking down here for, I am not posting pics of my bathroom.

May your week be leak-free, and may nothing but blessings rain down upon you!

Ooh, my heart is all gooey and melty. My little boy, 2½, hasn’t taken his new pirate hat off since I finished it for him. Part of that is because I’ve been putting it on him at every available opportunity so I can get a decent picture for the pattern, but mostly it’s because he reckon’s he’s dead cool in it. I’m sure the warmth and softness of the Fyberspates Scrumptious it’s made from isn’t hurting either!

Jake and the Neverland Pirates has been a firm favourite, and some of his first phrases were “ah, coconuts!” and “grab ‘em and go!” (looong emphasis on the “go!”, also accompanied by much running around in circles, fist upraised). Peppa Pig and Ben and Holly have also featured pirates at some point, so it’s no wonder he’s taken with them.

Today as he was cuddling his hat in bed, and he looked up at me and said “Mummy make it? Mummy knit it for me? Sank you, Mummy.” and I just puddled. Love you, baby bear.

Ruth Garcia-Alcantud was gracious enough to agree to mentor me as I set out on this path towards knitterly enlightenment. Not only does she have gorgeousdesigns to ogle, Ruth also gives excellent advice. She was able to identify my style, and I didn’t even know I had one!

We talked over Skype IM, it’s been a while since I’ve had an IM chat, but boy, I rocked those smileys. Quite a lot of the conversation ultimately came back to time management – if I can discipline myself to get my work done within the time I have available, that’ll be a flying start.

This is how long I have left to finish this post (from 45 mins).

Submissions I’ve been sending off are too lengthy. Huh. I forgot to ask if the ideas were sound, but I guess they are or I’m sure Ruth would have said – best not to pull the punches in these situations! So, do you have any tips for me on layout? I have a lot of information (graphical and written) that I need to fit onto one page (max 2). What tricks do you use to condense information? Thanks for any comments you can make.

We also talked a lot about blogging, my local knitting group (The Harrow Knitters (who totally rock!)), patterns with tricky bits, a little about cameras and accountants, and yes, poking myself in the eye. We covered a fair bit of ground in that first session.

This was the best bit for me though:

Me: even if i don’t have a style yet?

Ruth: if I can see it, cant you??

Me: erm???

Ruth: You are Miss Trick in the bag, I’ll teach you how to graft ribbing to make it look superb, I’ll teach you knitting backwards so your friends can gasp in admiration

Ruth: I’ll teach you to match welts at the back of a neck

Me: oh right. no pressure

Ruth: and put intarsia AND beads

Ruth: it’s your style

Ruth: I can see it

Ruth: you need to polish it by working on it

Me: ok, cool, thanks

Ruth: seriously now, I think you CAN do this

Ruth: I cannot tell you how many people don’t work half as hard in their submissions

Ruth: you’re putting in some serious elbow and brain into this and you can do this

Me: ta, ta for the confidence boost

Ruth: hey sometimes it’s all about that

I have a style! Rock on! Hope you like it ‘cos you’ll be seeing more of it!

I’ve been up to no good! I have organised some tech editing on two more patterns and I have outsourced some knitting for the first time. I’m about 3 weeks away from releasing a dinky little hat and a great bit mofo of a blanket. I’ll give you a sneak peek of the blanket schematic:

can’t tell you the name cos it’s a surprise

I guess I could have just left it as a blank rectangle, but that wouldn’t have been very nice of me.
So, I’m VERY excited about things slowly, glacially, moving forward. I have the next 6 months planned out and they’re HECTIC. Expect the following:

This is the hat that I designed in the WoollyWormhead hat design workshop, so I’m uncomfortable about accepting money for it. On the other hand, I put a lot of work into it, so I don’t want to give it away either. Greater exposure or not! So therefore I’m putting it up for sale, but I’m giving all proceeds to Tommy’s, who will make better use of it than I.

Tommy’s funds research into pregnancy problems and provides information to parents. We believe it is unacceptable that one in four women will lose a baby during pregnancy and birth.

I learned to knit when I was first expecting. Unfortunately, the pregnancy turned out to be what the docs call a “blighted ovum”, as my husband and I found out at the 12-week scan. Afterwards I was astounded by the number of women around me that had also had miscarriages. How come it’s not talked about? J and I felt like we were all alone in the world at the time. I finished knitting the little baby blanket I had started and my daughter has it on her bed now.